This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jake Middleton
Minnesota Wild Defense
Sixteen goals underwater on the goaltending, which was the worst mark on the club and none of it his.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | SJS | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 9:56 |
| 2019-20 | SJS | 10 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -2 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 0.0 | 10:46 |
| 2020-21 | SJS | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 8:44 |
| 2021-22 | SJS/MIN | 66 | 4 | 10 | 14 | +10 | 82 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 73 | 5.5 | 18:41 |
| 2022-23 | MIN | 79 | 3 | 12 | 15 | +15 | 72 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 79 | 3.8 | 19:02 |
| 2023-24 | MIN | 80 | 7 | 18 | 25 | -15 | 77 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 85 | 8.2 | 19:49 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 239 | 14 | 43 | 57 | +5 | 244 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 247 | 5.7 | 18:42 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
80 games, 7 goals and 18 assists for 25 points, 77 penalty minutes, 19:49 a night and minus-15. He took 48.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,369 minutes, the 40th percentile, and his ice went 50-70 against an expectation of 50.37-54.02.
Level with the chances at one end and sixteen more conceded than they called for at the other. That is the worst goaltending residual on the roster and it is what a minus-15 looks like when the shot share is only slightly below even.
The Finesse Game
117 attempts at a median of 46 feet with 18 per cent from inside 20, converted at 8.2 per cent against a career 5.67.
43 career assists in 239 games. Seven goals is a career high by three and it will not repeat. He gets the puck off the wall and out, and he does not carry it.
The Physical Game
He is 6-3 and 219 and hits as hard as any defenceman on this roster.
244 career penalty minutes in 239 games is a rate above one a game. He will fight, he clears the crease, and he blocks shots and kills penalties on a club that spends the sixth-most time shorthanded in hockey.
The Intangibles
A seventh-round pick in 2014 by Los Angeles, out of Wainwright, Alberta, six seasons across two organisations, and 57 points in 239 games.
He is 28 and took 19:49 a night on the second pair. A 210th-overall pick playing top-four minutes on the second-best defensive club in hockey is a good outcome, whatever the plus-minus says.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
22.2% of his attempts in the slot, 99th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
3 of 66 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.5%, 92nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
- durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He is 6-3 and 219 and hits as hard as any defenceman on this roster.”
“He will fight, he clears the crease, and he blocks shots and kills penalties on a club that spends the sixth-most time shorthanded in hockey.”
“He will fight, he clears the crease, and he blocks shots and kills penalties on a club that spends the sixth-most time shorthanded in hockey.”
“He will fight, he clears the crease, and he blocks shots and kills penalties on a club that spends the sixth-most time shorthanded in hockey.”
“He will fight, he clears the crease, and he blocks shots and kills penalties on a club that spends the sixth-most time shorthanded in hockey.”
“He gets the puck off the wall and out, and he does not carry it.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,369 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48.3%
- 40th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.8%
- 26th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 50 for, 70 against. Expected: 50.4 and 54.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 5 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.
Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 66 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 80 games
- Top speed
- 22.1 mph
- 69th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.41 a game
- Distance
- 2.67 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.7 mph
- 64th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2023-24 · 1369 minutes at five-on-five
- Brock Faber59%
- Jared Spurgeon11%
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2023-24
- The club
- MIN took 51.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.3% — 3.0 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,369 minutes at five-on-five — 93rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brock Faber | 47.1% | 50.0% | 54.4% |
| Kirill Kaprizov | 50.9% | 46.8% | 58.3% |
| Joel Eriksson Ek | 50.3% | 47.3% | 57.9% |
47.1% together, 50.0% for him apart and 54.4% for Faber apart. Faber was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
117 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 18% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 56% from beyond forty.